-
The dating game of the business world: Recruitment
Recruitment is crucial for any business. Without the right workforce a business would limp along and eventually grind to a halt. With the right employees behind a brand, firms can thrive, develop and prosper. It’s a bit like the dating game of the business world, get it wrong and you’re left frayed and frustrated, get it right and you’re buzzing, buoyant and excited about the future.
Though hiring the right people isn’t easy and takes time, money and effort. If you’re an employer wrestling with the often precarious world of recruitment, you may find the following advice useful to help iron out recruitment problems and generate employment success.
Is your job description up to scratch?
The recruitment process begins, primarily, with a job description. Having a clear job description with the expectations of the role plainly mapped out will mean there is no confusion about what the job requires and will entail.
As the HR Council writes in an article about ‘Getting the Right People’:
“A good job description is a basic HR management tool that can help to increase individual and organisational effectiveness.”
In the recruitment process, a good job description will help attract the right people to apply with relevant experience. Not only this but when recruited, a quality job description will help management identify to most relevant duties for the new employee and to realign workloads effectively, thus augmenting company effectiveness.
Is your work space up to standard?
Nobody wants to work from a shabby dump. Interviews are a two-way process and as much as you’re ‘weighing up’ a candidate to determine whether they are suitable for the role, they’re ‘weighing up’ you, to decide whether they would want to work for you.
Being located in quality, well-facilitated, clean and easily accessible offices and work premises says a lot about a company and its brand. In order to attract and recruit the right talent for your business it is therefore important that you conduct the interview on quality premises. If a candidate likes the look and feel of where they would be going to work, they’ll be more likely to say yes to the job, should it be offered to them.
Review your interview process
By their very nature, interviews can be daunting affairs, both for the job seeker and the host. By taking stock of your interview process and making it a less laborious affair and more innovative, engaging and even enjoyable, will help portray your company in a more fun and favourable light, an invaluable asset when attempting to attract the right calibre of employee.
In its ‘7 Tips for Conducting an Effective Job Interview’, Business News Daily cites research by Greg Willard, a Harvard University professor and senior vice president at Cangade, who researched almost 100 interviewing techniques and identified the most effective.
According to Willard, interviewers should prepare to be flexible and leave space for follow-up questions. They should also conduct a “job analysis” prior to the interview and consult with a “Subject Matter Expert” to craft a specific list of some of the most important elements of the role and what is required to be successful in the job.
Driving staff to be enthusiastic/creative
Nobody likes to be stuck in a job that’s going nowhere, with little chance of creative thinking and manoeuvre. Recruitment problems and high levels of staff turnover often stem from lack of career progression and employees being unable to voice and carry out any creative thinking at work.
Great ideas can come from anywhere and in order to attract and nurture the best employees, employers should encourage creativity and by doing so will drive staff to be more enthusiastic about their role and the company they work for, by creating a more engaging work environment.
As Bruce Strong, partner of CBridge Partners, a consulting organisation for business and non-profits told Inc.com, when asked about how employers can motivate staff:
“Money is generally the worst. Pride in company, pride in personal accomplishment, and being able to meaningfully contribute are generally much more powerful and enduring.”
Giving employees, no matter what their role is, more responsibilities can help nurture greater enthusiasm. After all, a little pressure is good for the soul.
Hire a recruitment company to take care of your recruitment requirements
All too often employers rely on themselves and their management team to use their own intuition when hiring new staff. This can be fine when it works, but unfortunately it isn’t something that can be taken for granted.
Not only is the recruitment process time-consuming, meaning you are using valuable employee time on an often lengthy procedure, but having experts in recruitment take control of the process can help you find the best calibre of employee.
For example, a business in Leeds might be looking to take on a new employee. Instead of assigning a manager to be responsible for the recruitment in Leeds only to find they spend umpteen number of hours on the job to finally recruit an individual who proves they are not up to the role, is hardly conducive with recruitment success.
By contrast, having a professional recruitment agency take care of all your employment needs for you, will not only save your business time but will help you access the best talent, meaning you get the right candidate for the job, first time.
Furthermore, hiring a recruitment company that is a small business will ensure a good working relationship is secured. Let them understand all your recruitment needs and then potential recruitment problems and lengthy employment processes are no longer your responsibility.
If you’re looking for recruitment in Leeds, Strand Recruitment provides proactive employment solutions. Through smart talent acquisition, Strand Recruitment helps business in Leeds develop by finding employers with the necessary talent to take their business forward.
Carrwood Park caught up with Strand Recruitment, which offered the following advice about recruitment.
At Strand Recruitment we speak to a variety of businesses across the Leeds market, ranging from small start-ups through to large global organisations, most clients will tell us that recruiting is a head-ache, and one which is time-consuming and challenging. Key feedback we hear from our clients include the struggle to attract the right calibre of candidate, not only do they struggle to find individuals with the right skills, they also struggle to find the right personality fit for their business.
Business in Leeds is experiencing fantastic growth, the economy is strong and as a result temporary, interim and permanent opportunities are available across all industry sectors. Great news, yes!! However, this creates a challenge when you are looking to attract the best candidate, you have a lot of competition! The candidate gets to choose! They may well have two or three opportunities to consider, and as a result you need to ensure that you represent your business and the role in the best possible way.
During our interview process Strand recruitment will ask each candidate what is top of their priority list, the most common responses include scope for progression, a professional and modern working environment, training and development and to be valued as part of the business. No longer is the interview process simply the client examining the candidate, you, the client, are also under review and you need to sell yourself!
The advice we would give any business, small or large is as follows;
- Know your competition, speaking to a local recruitment company will help you gain this insight to your local market. What are other businesses offering, how does your role / business compare?
- Be clear on what you are looking for? Ensure you have a comprehensive job profile. This will help sell the role. When Strand Recruitment meet their clients we offer honest feedback regarding the role profile and will help you benchmark your job specification to ensure your expectations are realistic – does your ideal candidate exist and if so what are they looking for? Consider salary, study support, holidays, pension, hours of work etc.
- Ensure you have a thorough interview process? Define the key competencies for the role and put together a time frame from CV submission through to offer. So many clients miss out on the perfect candidate due to the interview time frame. Remember your position won’t be the only one the candidate is considering, and candidates will not wait around.
- Ensure you have your sales pitch ready, you will need to sell your company and the position – why would somebody want to work for you?
- In the majority of cases the successful candidate is not active on the jobs boards, they maybe passively looking but certainly not trawling jobs adverts. As such you need to ensure you have a way of networking with these passive candidates? Feedback from clients suggest that advertising has limited success, it is often the candidate who has been actively ‘hunted’ that gets the job. If you do not have this resource within your business, you may consider working with a recruitment partner who can tap into their existing network.
If you are growing your team and want to eliminate the recruitment problems experienced by many then consider working with a local recruitment business. Look for consultants who have extensive experience within the local market, who are not afraid of asking you the difficult questions, and who can add value to the recruitment process, making it easier and stress free. A good recruiter should be a business partner to your organisation, offering value for money and essentially remove the hassle so you can get on with your day job. Remember your time is money! Let the recruiter trawl through the irrelevant applications, if the consultant knows your business and knows their candidates then recruiting can be straight forward.
By making a few smart moves such as being located in quality offices and encouraging employee creativity, and delegating recruitment practices to the experts, businesses, big and small, can ensure they have the talent in place to push their business to greater heights.
The help your business in Leeds be deemed as professional and ‘going places’ you may want to think about hiring office space or meeting rooms at Carrwood Park. Situated on the outskirts of Leeds with easy access to the motorways, Carr wood Park’s top quality and well-facilitated office space can help your business be seen in a much more professional and positive light.